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Interestingly, one of the factors that helped define this as a matter of inter-state concern was the practice of some states of buying bus tickets to send their poor to other states as a way of reducing welfare costs.
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Its kind of like what Mexico does now with its citizens. Shows them where and how to cross the border so we can pick up the cost of running their country.,

Jeff
When I first moved to PA I was floored ,,,pissed,,and had a contained phycotic reaction to all the different little taxes I'd had recieved.

The first tax I recieved was welcome to boyertown,,, here is a per capita tax welcome thanks for coming,,,,,, which means I had to pay a person tax on every member of my family,,, then before I new it I got hit with "The right to work tax" sure its only 10 bucks but its the thought that counts
then when tax time came around I found out that I had to pay a city income tax based on my 1040. Which was pretty steep. Then of course there were the townships taxes and county taxes I could't keep up with them all.

I realized I was no longer a free man but under government rule from that point on.

I would love to have sat in that session where people had voted on the right to work tax. Couldn.t they have just called it The give to welfare people tax. Or we are running out of words for taxes so lets call it the right to work tax.

I think you have lived in a tax everthing state for so long you have grown acustom to being taxed. and therefore see it as a necessity or just the way things are. I think most people who live in metropolitan areas see it that way which is evedenced by their voting stats.
Big city usually blue
Rural usually red. I would have no problem with big cities charging big taxes because I'm sure its costly to run a giant burocracy ,,but to reach out to all corners of a state to help fund the machine is just wrong.

I think some taxes are important but most spending is not.
But then again I'm part neandrathal so my wife claims.

Ah, the great supply side myth ...Tax revenues would have gone up more without the cuts. What seldom gets mentioned is that government spending, either for hard goods or for transfer payments ... work just as well as other tax cuts in stimulating growth or stimulating inflation.

So, the basic question becomes: Is the wealth of our nation derived from government or from the private sector? I think it's time to consider that the top 10% of wage earners contribute over 70% of the total tax dollars to our Federal Government- These earners are clearly a minority and should be afforded protections as a minority class!

Please explain to me why I sold property with a gain in "08" taxed at 15% but would have refused to sell same at a higher gains rate. Seems to me I contributed tax dollars under what I thought was a reasonable tax rate but would have avoided a higher tax.

GY

The word "Politics," is derived from "Poly," meaning Many and from "Ticks," meaning Blood Sucking Parasites-Kinky Freidman.

Gosh, Yardley... nobody is denying you your need to offset your guilt by paying MORE taxes if that's what turns your crank. Maybe if you would just offset the amount your fellow liberals like Dashole and others didn't pay, the budget could be balanced.

It's just impossible to try and explain tax cuts helping the economy to a group of sanctimonius tax-and-spend blind-siders. They would rather raise taxes to confiscatory levels, and then slyly evade their share, so the law abiding tax payer has to cover their azz.

UB

When the one you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure.

so Yardley then how much of my labor does the government own? How much can they take from me and give to someone else for the "general welfare" I and many others like me think that giving welfare payments to people actually hurts the "general welfare" of these United States. And states obviously can do what they want, within the constitution of course, thats the beauty of the states is that if you don't like one you move to another. When you rule the country from the federal level there is no getting away from this which is why we have states and not just one big country. Think people leaving from Michigan is a coincidence or that there is something more to do with having some of the highest taxes in the nation. Look at the states with the highest taxes and i can bet (yes this is a guess) that you will find the highest deficits.

The various comments are interesting given that I never said anything at all about the appropriateness of how much was being paid in taxes. Rather I said two things:

- Federal taxes are constitutional for virtually any purpose adopted by Congress.

- From a purely economic perspective you can stimulate the economy with either tax cuts or spending.

Neither of these comments was addressed by any of the responses. I also said that, over time, our governments should pay their bills and that Republicans as a group and Reagan and Bush in particular had been bad at doing that. This comment was also not addressed.

Interesting.

On the question of amounts paid in taxes and whether they are too high, I'll make a few observations.

As of 2005 (the most recent year for which data are available), the average effective tax rate from all Federal taxes (income, social insurances, corporate income taxes, excise taxes, etc) was 20.5%. This compares with an average effective Fderal tax rate in 1979 of 22.2% -- so much for all those increases...

As of 2005, the average effective tax rate for the top 20% of households (measured by income) was 25.5% while for the bottom 80% it was 11.5%. The average income for the top 20% was $231,300 while for the bottom 80% it was $49,250.

In 1979, the average income for the top 20% was $132,100 and the average income for the bottom 80% was $42,425. Thus, incomes for the highest 20% grew 82% and incomes for the bottom 80% grew 16%. In that same period, income for the top 1% grew 201%. These figures are all expressed in 2005 dollars. For the bottom 40% of households, income grew only 5%. Obviously all these numbers are a sure sign of our inexorable march towards a socialistic redistribution of income. (Source fdata or Federal tax numbers is at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/efftax05.html and comes from the Congressional Budget Office)

When state and local taxes are added to the picture, the difference in effective tax rates between the richest and the poorest as a percentage of income declines since state and local taxes are almost all regressive in nature. That is, the lower your income, the higher a percentage of your income goes to pay taxes.

My personal belief is that the shift in income to the wealthiest few from everyone else over the last 30 years has been a major contributor to our current economic problems and that, in addition, it will lead to increasing political instability. I believe that some of our taxes are poorly designed and have a distorting effect on the economy (e.g. corporate income taxes). However, I do not believe that our taxes are so high that they discourage work.

I believe that persistent spending deficits in both good times and bad are destructive to the economy and that, over time, government budgets must be balanced. If taxes are to be cut, spending should be cut immediately and equally. If spending is to be increased for any purpose including war, taxes should be increased immediately to cover the cost. There is no free lunch. If government deficits or surpluses are needed at a point in time to achieve economic stability, I believe the variances should come in the form of non-recurring tax credits or tax surcharges or in the form of increases or reductions in true capital spending. Temporary situations should not become the excuse for permanent imbalances that will create new problems in the future.

Finally, if the form of policy discipline I suggest were actually implemented, I suspect that the electorate would probably prefer slightly higher taxes than the reduction of services needed to keep taxes at their current rates. However, I may be completely wrong. The benefit of the approach I suggest is that it imposes accountability for the decisions made so the electorate can make a choice between real options rather than between either party's wannabe dreams and irresponsible financing of current consumption against my grandchildren's futures.

There you go again Jeff, trying to argue on point and with the facts on your side.

Can't you work on blaming the messenger, blaming the media, or diverting to some other subject slightly off topic.Also you may want to try to globally using the words republicans, right wing, or conservative in a derogatory sense as much as possible, but then again why stoop to that level?

When you do start typing with both hands, please remind everyone where we are not taxed enough. You might even provide us with a little levity as to what you pay...I'm sure it will be a bundle...but then you and global warming buddy Henry V are looking forward to more. I say, why wait? Send in all ya got. It may resolve your guilt for not paying enough.

Here's an oldie that hasn't been around for a while, just as a reminder of how much we ARE taxed already.

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want those 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases. A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Jesus was still alive! A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the stone age. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet. BUTůA billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending money!

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago... and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt... We had the largest middle class in the world... and Mom stayed home to raise the kids. What happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'

And now I need to press "1" for English! What the he!! happened??

Bend over y'all... Jeff, and Henry, and their liberal constituants have far more need for your money than you do. And after they grease the nation with their pork, that's just the beginning of the fiasco. Once the printing presses produce the paper to provide these handouts, what you have left won't be worth a dime on the dollar. You MAY have thought Jimmy Carter had the market cornered on inflation, but after this current batch of socialists get done, you won't have anything worth passing on to your grandkids.

Did I hear anyone whisper gold?

UB

When the one you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure.

Please let me know when your state is going to pay its own way rather than rely on others' federal taxes to exist, but I will give you some credit, your state did slip to #10 as of 2005, and only received $1.48 for every $1.00 in federal taxes or just under $10K per capita. Keep up the good work.

To stay true to your ideology, maybe you should move to a low tax state that also has a low return rate. The only state that comes close is Utah. All the other states in the bottom 10 for federal tax burden appear to be in the top 20 for return on tax dollars with most in the top 10. Interesting.

When you do start typing with both hands, please remind everyone where we are not taxed enough. You might even provide us with a little levity as to what you pay...I'm sure it will be a bundle...but then you and global warming buddy Henry V are looking forward to more. I say, why wait? Send in all ya got. It may resolve your guilt for not paying enough.

Here's an oldie that hasn't been around for a while, just as a reminder of how much we ARE taxed already.

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want those 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases. A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Jesus was still alive! A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the stone age. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet. BUTůA billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending money!

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago... and our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt... We had the largest middle class in the world... and Mom stayed home to raise the kids. What happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'

And now I need to press "1" for English! What the he!! happened??

Bend over y'all... Jeff, and Henry, and their liberal constituants have far more need for your money than you do. And after they grease the nation with their pork, that's just the beginning of the fiasco. Once the printing presses produce the paper to provide these handouts, what you have left won't be worth a dime on the dollar. You MAY have thought Jimmy Carter had the market cornered on inflation, but after this current batch of socialists get done, you won't have anything worth passing on to your grandkids.

Did I hear anyone whisper gold?

UB

Once again, where did I call for more taxes? All I did ask is that we not spend what we don't raise for taxes. Does that make you one of those spend but don't tax Republicans?